Monopoly in the Sand Box

Today, the weather is nice, so we settle into the cool soft sand and set up the monopoly board. The rules says everybody gets $2000 and an even number of turns. Of course, as we are supposed to believe in life, sometimes a roll comes up empty, sometimes we get to advance to GO and collect $200, so it is a bit of luck and a lot of good/bad decision making that determines the winner.

But to more reflect real life, our game today has one player, drawn at random, lets say as random as the chance of a person being born rich. This person receives $10,000 and will get $1000 every time he goes around go, he never has to go to jail, pay assessments, fines, or bail to get out of jail.
We will call him the “Rich” player. Two players get to play by the conventional rules. Two players get to play by “Special rules” they get $50 when they go around go, and cannot buy any property they land on, unless no one else wants to buy it, and if they do want to buy it, they have to pay double face value.

In our game, the players can not go out of the game, so there is no monopoly, the poorest player has to take on more debt to pay for the more and more expensive hotels he stays at, and all three of the regular and rich players have to pay up to fund the debt of the poor players. The poor players are still in debt, but the state still has to pay the debt.

Now, if, instead, we adjusted the game so that the rich guy only got $5000 to start and only $500 when he went past go, he would still be rich, and still have a great chance to win, but not now we distribute the rest of the same $15,000 we distributed to start the first game”

$10,000 Rich

$2,000 Regular

$2,000 Regular

$500 Special

$500 Special

Now we give it out like this

$10,000 Rich -$5,000 = $5,000

$2,000 Regular + $1,000 = $3,000

$2,000 Regular + $1,000 = $3,000

$500 Special + $1,500 =$2,000

$500 Special + $1,500 =$2,000

And then each time they passed go, they got proportional to their original distribution.

The Rich is still rich, the Special is still poorer than the other two classes, but now, they are a lot less likely to be a burden on the other players, they are less likely to run out of money and lose the game. The rich will still have a huge advantage, but it is a much fairer game where everyone at least has a chance.

Of course, we could tax the rich so that each person has the same amount, but in real life, most people don’t see that as fair, no matter how the rich person got rich.

This week, we have seen the rules rewritten in a shocking way:

Now the game is this:

$10,000 Rich + $500 = $5,500

$2,000 Regular – $150 = $1,850

$2,000 Regular – $150 = $1,850

$500 Special – $100 =$400

$500 Special – $100 =$400

Can anyone imagine how that extra $500 to the rich guy will benefit the game?